Canon EOS 2000D lens advice

[GeoAmy]

I have the Canon EOS 2000D and so far have just been using the lens that came with it (EF-S 18-55mm IS II Lens). Will this lens produce decent quality astro shots, or is there a better one you can recommend for a complete beginner on a tight budget (no more than £200)?

[Adreneline]

This is a little outside your budget but would pair nicely with your 2000D  -  he’s open to offers. 

Otherwise a second-hand prime fixed focal length lens like the popular Samyang 135mm - or even a nifty-fifty prime lens for wide-field.

 

 

[Elp]

That kit lens is no good. From experience generally many zooms, well most lenses in general will have edge coma/CA/loCA they just can't cope with producing clean sharp starfields, and that's if they can focus to infinity at all on stars. The best astro lenses in general are the Samyang 135 F2 ED or T2.2 video version (much cheaper as everyone clamours for the photo version not knowing they are the same internally) and the 14mm F2.8 ED (I found this too wide to use practically in urban environments due to the large curved glass which catches stray light easily overexposing or flaring the shot). Note for the Samyang range the ED generally is a sign of their astro performance (but not a guarantee) due to using Extra Dispersion glass in their construction, Samyangs website shows technical data for their lenses and pay particular attention to their MTF graphs, you'll see the above two lenses are extremely good in this regard.

Vintage Asahi Takumars also perform decently considering they're 50 odd years old, I've got a suite of them. Note you will get a slight red halo (or green after doing the infinity stop adjustment) around the largest stars as they focus red and green at different focus points but the total field flatness is very good.

[Elp]

Note the longer focal length you go you will need tracking if youre doing DSO imaging. Even at 50mm it becomes an issue. Less than say 10s images it should be fine.

[GeoAmy]

2 hours ago, Elp said:

Note the longer focal length you go you will need tracking if youre doing DSO imaging. Even at 50mm it becomes an issue. Less than say 10s images it should be fine.

Thank you for your response, it's been really helpful in guiding what I need to look for! A couple more questions: can the Samyang 135 f/2 give decent images even without tracking or would I need to decrease the focal length? I've found a selection of second hand lenses including some Samyang, Rokinon, Tokina, Sigma, and Canon. Are any of these brands ones that I should try to avoid in your experience?

[Elp]

It'd be difficult imaging at 135mm on a fixed mount, you might just get away with targets such as open star clusters, Andromeda M31, Orion M42 and Pleiades M45 as they're quite bright but anything else you'll see star trailing likely over 10s (I've imaged Andromeda and Orion through a 360mm telescope at 9s but on a tracking alt az mount (azgti)), ideally you'd want a mount which tracks in equatorial mode then there is no real limit to exposure length other than light pollution swamp and camera amp glow/noise.

Samyang is also known as Rokinon in USA and also Walimex so they're all the same.

I've no experience with Tokina and Sigma but know the Sigma Arts are highly regarded (and expensive) but unsure of their astro performance. DPreview has a lot of threads about people asking about AP lens performance.

A decent Canon is the 200mm L ii though you'd need a tracking mount again, I hadn't bought this lens as it infringes on my short FL refractor.

Edited November 12, 2023 by Elp

[Carbon Brush]

Astrophotography is a money pit.

A suggestion is to put a little money into a very basic tracking mount. EQ with RA drive is not going to cost much on the used market.
Grab some pictures and see how good (or bad) your kit lens is going to be.
If your pictures are tracking but somewhat off it is the lens. By that I mean rugby ball stars, rather than star trails.
If your lens is letting you down, try stopping down and the tracking mount lets you keep on target for the longer exposure.
Then look for a 2nd hand lens. Almost anything with a decent name. Something thrown out from a film camera? These are often good and cheap.
You can buy adapters to go from M42 or whatever may be on the lens to the Canon fit.
Nobody in the daylight photo world wants these old heavy manual lenses. Their loss and your gain.

I think that is deep enough into the money pit😄

HTH, David.

[Elp]

1 minute ago, Carbon Brush said:

Nobody in the daylight photo world wants these old heavy manual lenses

I dunno, I quite like imaging with my Takumars, something about that analogue feel of focusing by eye and taking a shot.

[Carbon Brush]

@elp. Yes a bit of generalisation on my part. I should have said a significant number of people aren't interested in heavy manual lenses.

A work colleague is very much into wildlfe photography. Spending huge sums on cameras and lenses.
When I told him about my Samyang 135 he was not impressed. No autofcus or auto aperture.🤔
Wildlife and astro are of course very different applications and we can benefit from the 'daylight photo' reject or throw out products.

[Elp]

Their loss. The SY135 is one of the best pieces of "astro optics" I've ever used. It is heavy though, that's why I've also kept my Takumar 135 as it's smaller and lighter.

One of the cheapest cost of entries for a tracking mount (well the cheapest is you can make your own barn door one), is an Omegon LX, it used to be the case you had to make your own solution to EQ mount it so you could align to Polaris but now they supply with everything you need to do this. Works well, and it's purely mechanical. But note, you'll quickly want to upgrade which is why I bought my azgti afterward and EQ mode-ed that with full autoguiding and asiair control.